10of14On Jan. 3, 2019, Harris County Sheriff’s Office homicide investigators released this sketch initially believed to describe their main suspect. The man depicted in the sketch is likely a witness who detectives would like to speak with.Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office

While two suspects have been identified in the shooting death of 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes, many people are still questioning why the initial sketch of the possible suspect looked completely different.

Barnes' killing on Dec. 30 near a Walmart parking lot sparked outrage and sadness across the country. The girl was riding in a car with her mother and three sisters when a gunman opened fire, shooting her in the head.

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A live press briefing from the Harris County Sheriff's Office on the Jazmine Barnes homicide investigation on Jan. 6, 2019.

Video: Harris County Sheriff's Office

National figures, like activist and writer Shaun King, pleaded with the public to help find her killer. As King continuously upped the reward for finding the suspect, hundreds of tips started pouring in, he said.

Last Thursday, the Harris County Sheriff's Office released a sketch of the suspect showing a thinly built white male in his 30s or 40s with sunken cheeks and a stubble beard. At the time, police said they believed the shooter fled the area in a red pickup truck.

Activists claimed that the child's death could have been racially motivated. However, the person now charged in the child's death, Eric Black Jr., is a 20-year-old black man who was arrested while driving a different car on Saturday.

Black reportedly told police that he and a second black male suspect, partially identified in court as Larry Woodruffe, mistook Barnes' vehicle for another. Woodruffe has not been formally charged in the child's death, but court records indicate he was arrested on a drug possession charge Sunday.

King explained the discrepancy on Instagram on Sunday. He said the four eyewitnesses to the shooting confused the killer for a white man who sped off in his red pickup truck.

The mother and the girls in the car never saw the shooter. They only looked up from the carnage inside their vehicle to see the white man drive off in the pickup, he said.

"They heard the shots, saw that Jazmine was shot in the head, that her mother was shot, and then looked up and saw this red truck with a white man driving it peeling off," King said in his post. "THREE separate eyewitnesses, each credible, who also heard the shooting, also saw this truck speeding off. I spoke to each of them. They also assumed the white man driving it fired the shots. A brave man even followed the red truck in his own car and got a good look at him. A tow truck driver also saw the truck and got a look at him. In the meantime, the two men that actually shot and killed Jazmine drove off in a completely different direction through the neighborhood."

King said he received a tip about Black and Woodruffe's involvement the same day police released the sketch of the suspect, but he and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez couldn't corroborate the story.

"I reported this to the Sheriff immediately, because the witness was so compelling, but the sheriff and I both just could not make sense of it," he said, later adding, "We received so many bad tips, and so much misinformation, it just took us three days to solve it after the initial report was made."